Evidence of absence is always a tough one but one could point to the absence of significant troop presence there as of 2012.
Any "control" that the US has over the oil in Iraq is in the form of contracts that US firms have to develop the oilfields, which are currently being bid against by chinese, russian and dutch firms:
I'd note that politically, from this point forwards it's a big win for Iraqi politicians to support non-US interests as far as the oil, so the only special treatment we'll be able to get is the same as in Nigeria, etc: Bribe the right people and hope you did a better job than the Chinese.
Well, I might be wrong at this, I am not really good in politics, but when I hear in news that Libya is being bombed by US, UK, and FR and then I make a quick google search about Libya's major oil buyers and see that those are exactly the same countries that came to bomb them. Well the whole spirit of "bringing democracy to totalitarian states" disappears... From the first link you provided, I wonder why is it ExxonMobile to get the Iraqi oil contract before LukOil and others. Here in Turkmenistan, the major contracted oil/gas companies are Petronas(Malaysia), Petforac(Russia) and Dragon Oil(UAE). I wonder where is ExxonMobile and British Petrolium, ohh, maybe they are still busy at bringing democracy to other more oil and gas wealthy states such as Iran, Syria and Co.
The major oil buyers thing in Libya happened around 2005 or so when Qaddafi decided to reconcile with the west in exchange for profitable oil contracts and an implicit promise that we wouldn't bomb the crap out of him the first chance we got (joke's on him). So we were actually bombing a country where we'd already gotten the oil access, not the other way around.
As far as the oil trade in general, it's been dominated by cloak and dagger stuff for decades, in the US we have a partnership between the oil firms and the gov't where the gov't goes to bat for them in foreign countries, and in return they don't pay their taxes. In China, there's less of a formal division between the two so it's simpler. But both cases are the same.
And I'm not saying that's right, but it's a lot more complex than "the US controls Iraq's oil". We don't, really, we have to bribe people and do underhanded stuff on equal footing with everyone else at this point.
I couldn't reply on your last comment so I am doing it here.
>So we were actually bombing a country where we'd already gotten the oil access, not the other way around.
Well yea, I can imagine Qaddafi saying "You fools, don't bomb us, you are the ones who buy our oil!" and then US and Co says "Well, you fool, we came here to take it for free!"
Edit: Where free means "We still buy it according to market rates, but heck, prove the opposite, we own the media anyway"
The onus is on the person making that claim, not the other way around. You can't make a claim without any evidence, and then defend it by demanding evidence of the contrary.
Because the US pays market rates for oil, including Iraqi oil. Generally, when you control something, you pay less for it. I mean, I pay myself much less to eat the vegetables I grow in the garden that I control than I do for vegetables from supermarket.
